Power dealer Gunvor to pay over $660 million to settle US bribery case By Reuters

By Jonathan Stempel, Luc Cohen and Chris Prentice

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Gunvor pleaded responsible on Friday to a felony cost of conspiring to violate a U.S. anti-bribery legislation and agreed to pay greater than $660 million, marking the top of a long-running felony probe into the massive power dealer.

Gunvor’s plea to conspiring to violate the Overseas Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) was accepted by U.S. District Decide Eric Vitaliano within the federal courtroom in Brooklyn, New York.

Jean-Baptiste Leclercq, Gunvor’s normal counsel, informed the choose that the dealer conspired to violate the anti-bribery legislation by making funds to intermediaries to win enterprise with Ecuador’s nationwide oil firm Petroecuador.

Gunvor is among the world’s 5 largest oil merchants.

Its payout features a $374.6 million felony effective and the forfeiture of $287.1 million, federal prosecutor Jonathan Lax mentioned on the listening to.

The Geneva-based dealer can be credited for as much as $93 million in funds to each Switzerland and Ecuador, he added. Gunvor additionally agreed to resolve a associated investigation by the Workplace of the Lawyer Basic of Switzerland, the corporate mentioned.

In an announcement, Gunvor Chairman Torbjorn Tornqvist mentioned his firm was sorry for previous errors, and was dedicated to enhancing its now “industry-leading compliance program.”

The U.S. Division of Justice and the U.S. Commodity Futures Buying and selling Fee had been probing Gunvor since a minimum of 2020, and a former worker in 2021 pleaded responsible over a scheme to bribe Ecuadorean authorities officers to win enterprise.

Reuters reported in December that Gunvor had put aside $650 million to resolve the probe.

The investigation was a part of a multi-year push by U.S. authorities to root out fraud and misconduct within the commodities sector.

Merchants who purchase and promote uncooked supplies typically function in jurisdictions the place corruption is widespread, placing them susceptible to violating the FCPA, which prohibits paying bribes to international officers.

Overseas firms that conduct enterprise in america are topic to that legislation.

In February 2023, a federal choose in Manhattan ordered Glencore (OTC:) to pay $700 million after the mining and commodities buying and selling large agency pleaded responsible to a decade-long bribery scheme protecting a number of nations.

And in December, Connecticut-based commodities dealer Freepoint Commodities reached a $98 million settlement of bribery and different U.S. costs.

Vitol, the world’s largest oil dealer, resolved U.S. and Brazilian probes in December 2020 by agreeing to pay $164 million and admitting to bribing officers in Brazil, Mexico and Ecuador.